t--) O. ^ '.-' 



MAN IN THE 
DEMOCRACY 




MAN IN THE 
DEMOCRACY 



His Educational Rights^ 
Duties and Destiny. 




INAUGURAL ADDRESS 

As President of the University of Cincinnati, by 

CHARLES W. DABNEY 



November 16, 1904. 



;^ 



t 






in 



GIFT 





JUN 4 1912 



MAN IN THK DEMOCRACY. 



Governor Herrick, Mayor Fleischmann^ Mr. Chairman 
and Gentlemen of the Board of Directors; Delegates 
of Sister Institiitio7is and Guests; Colleagues of the 
Faculties; Alumni and Students of the University ; 
Ladies and Gentlemen of Cincinnati : 



These generous greeting-s compel me to pause a 
moment to attempt to express, if possible, the feeling- 
they evoke. For your kindly welcome, for your words 
of encouragement, and for your assurance of coopera- 
tion, I am profoundly grateful. To make suitable 
response is beyond my power. Your kind utterances 
make me very humble now, but they will inspire me and 
give me strength in the future. To justify your faith 
and realize your hope will tax my capacity to the utter- 
most ; but, relying upon the sympathy and support of 
the Directors, of the Faculties, of the Alumni, and of 
the people of Cincinnati, I shall endeavor faithfully to 
execute this office, trusting you to judge the work as 
generously as you have welcomed the worker. 

I stand here to-day, however, merely as a represent- 
ative of the ideals and aspirations of education of 
the people of Cincinnati, and as the chosen head of 
the institution with which they propose to crown 
the life of their city. A system of public schools, 



ascending- grade by grade from the primaries to the 
colleges, and a justly celebrated collection of private 
schools, professional colleges, and schools of music and 
art, demand a university as the capstone of the educa- 
tional pyramid. Having opened her rivers and rail- 
ways to commerce, founded her marts of trade, and built 
her halls of industry, Cincinnati has now established 
on the heights her Acropolis of culture, and will erect 
thereon her temples of learning-, science, and art. 

From a small town of a section Cincinnati has grown 
to be a great city of the nation. The half million people 
who earn their living- within sight of these hills will 
soon be a million. To all of these and to those other 
millions dwelling in our tributary country, the city 
owes a duty of direction and leadership. Nothing- 
develops a people like education ; nothing- refines a 
people like art ; nothing exalts a people but righteous- 
ness : and these are the ends for which the University 
exists. 

Education is the most serious problem of the 
democracy. The American people have fully resolved 
to give all their children an elementary education. 
That much is settled for good. But shall the people of 
a republic depend entirely upon private individuals, 
associations, and churches for the means of higher 
education? Our states have said, "No." They have 
built their universities, which are already the most 
characteristic institutions and powerful agents of the 
democracy. How a great city shall organize and sup- 
port a university of its own is the problem before us. 

Cincinnati is the first of American cities to under- 
take to solve this problem. As the result of the gener- 
ous provisions of her private citizens and of the public 
contributions of the people, she has already come into 
possession of a large educational plant. This union 
of public and private effort in the support of a noble 
cause is typical of her honorable past and prophetic of 
her splendid future. It forms the most interesting 
educational experiment now being made in the country, 
if not in the world. A municipal system of education, 



complete from the elementary schools to the graduate 
and professional departments, a great unit of democracy 
at work educating itself — what could be more important? 
The practical solution of this problem will be interest- 
ing- to every large democratic community. Yours, fel- 
low citizens, is the opportunity to serve not only your 
own children and those of your neighbor, but our entire 
country and the whole educational world. 

This great undertaking calls for our united, our 
devoted support. The noble manner in which private 
citizens and the citj^ have cooperated in establishing and 
in bringing together the different elements of this sys- 
tem ; the provisions for maintenance now permanently 
fixed in the charter of the city; the devotion of ofi&cial 
boards and private associations ; and especially the en- 
thusiasm for the University manifested by this convo- 
cation today — all prophec}^ a glorious success for this 
unique and epoch-making movement. Fellow citizens, 
for your country's sake, for the world's sake, as well as 
for her own sake, Cincinnati must not, can not, will 
not fail! 

The task before us suggests the theme for the hour. 
I ask you to consider with me the man in the demo- 
crac3% and his educational rights, duties, and destiny ! 

The moving spectacle of the centuries exhibits four 
institutions which make for civilization : the home, the 
school, the state, and the church. Wherever these 
agencies have been wanting in the world there has been 
no civilization ; where they have been strongest and 
freest, there has been the highest civilization. One or 
more of these institutions has always played a leading 
part in the large achievements of the race. These 
agencies are closely linked together, and each reveals a 
phase of the social relations of man. The home dis- 
covers the child in relation to his parents and brethren ; 
the school reveals the youth in relation to his teacher 
and fellow students ; the state, the man in relation to 
his fellow citizens ; and the church, the spirit of man 
in relation to the Father of spirits. Through the dis- 
cipline of these relations man is educated. 



The fundamental conception of education is growth 
and training-. Development comes first by training and 
then by work. Man must grow and work, or else decay 
and die : he must be before he can do ; he must get 
before he can give ; he must become strong before he 
can serve. But he can only get his growth and enter 
into his full estate by the help of these agencies of 
his social environment. This process of education goes 
on continuously wherever we live and so long as we 
live. Growth and training are not limited to the home 
and the school. The wonderful fact is that we grow by 
giving and become strong by serving. Therefore, that 
form of state is best which gives man's social nature 
the fullest exercise. Of all governments democracy 
does this best. 

The school is the institution whose special task it 
is to develop into fullness of being and doing the future 
citizens of the democracy. The church and state de- 
velop men incidentally in the course of their other func- 
tions. The school trains them by a definite plan and 
with a fixed purpose. 

Let us first recall a few of the elementary principles 
of democracy. Governments exist for the protection 
and development of mankind. They exist not for the 
governors, not for a bureaucracy of their agents, not for 
the benefit of any class whatever, but solely for the 
benefit of all the people governed. We can not say of 
any form of government that it is best for all people 
under all circumstances. One form of government may 
be best for a set of people under certain conditions ; 
another, for a set of people under different conditions. 
That government is preferable which most adequately 
protects the race and trains the powers of its people. 
No government is of divine right, but that government 
is divinest which best maintains justice, love, and mercy 
among men. Autocracy may have been best for a peo- 
ple in its childhood ; aristocracy, for a people in its 
youth ; but democracy is the best form of govern- 
ment for a people in its manhood. It is the best system 
we know to-day, not because it always affords the best 



protection to individuals, for this it does not always do ; 
but because it trains and educates men most g-enerally 
and most effectively. Undoubtedly, democracy in its 
present form is far from perfect ; but it certainly con- 
tains the essential truth in its fundamental teaching 
that g-overnment exists for man, and not man for govern- 
ment and in that still nobler teaching that we are all 
brethren, not because we are of one race or of one 
church, not because we are citizens of Cincinnati, or 
members of this republic, but because, whether Cauca- 
sian, African, or American Indian ; whether Jewish, 
Protestant, or Catholic, we are all sons of one Father 
which is in Heaven. 

But even the freedom and brotherhood of the demo- 
cracy can not produce perfect equality of condition 
among all citizens. On the contrary, individual liberty 
in a free state must lead unavoidably to inequality of 
conditions and possessions. Variety is the law of nature. 
Where there is no variety there can be no selection. A 
high civilization implies infinite differentiation with 
freedom. Such differentiation is always followed by 
wide integration, or union of related elements, and then 
a new differentiation begins, and so on forever. Variety 
between men, between families, between communities, 
between churches, and between states, is thus an es- 
sential condition of growth and freedom. 

While differences of condition in our present civil- 
ization are inevitable, in the democracy there is an ever 
increasing realization of man as a free being. In an 
autocracy like the Sublime Porte no one is free but the 
Sultan ; in an aristocracy like ancient Athens, twenty 
thousand citizens were free, and four hundred thousand 
human beings were slaves ; but in this republic of the 
Anglo-Saxon race all men have an equal chance to be- 
come free and, what is more important, all men possess 
an ever growing consciousness of freedom, and an ever 
increasing realization of brotherhood. This freedom is 
not license, the absence of law, but righteous self rule, 
the consciousness of oneself as the source of law. In 



order that a man may have true freedom he must be 
educated. 

"I, Freedom, dwell with knowledge ; I abide 
With men by culture trained and fortified. 
Conscience my sceptre is and law my sword." 

This ideal of democratic freedom is possible only 
where all the people are educated, for where they are 
ignorant, the attempted democracy soon reverts to an 
aristocracy or to an oligarchy. Because of the mass of 
ignorant blacks, there existed in the South before the 
Civil War an aristocracy ; because of great bodies of 
untrained foreigners, the governments of some of our 
large cities have at times been veritable oligarchies. 
Modern democracy, realizing the menace of ignorance 
to her very existence, has resolved that every child 
within her bounds, rich or poor, white or colored, shall 
have an opportunity to get all the education it can take. 
Nothing less than this will meet the requirements and 
fulfil the ideals of a government "of the people, by the 
people, and for the people." 

The first right of the man in the democracy then is 
to have a school. Education is the preparation of the 
fully developed free man for service in his environment. 
It first builds the all-round man, strong in all parts of his 
nature : mind, affections and will ; it then adjusts him 
to his ph3^sical, intellectual, emotional, and volitional 
environment. It is the duty of the democracy to train 
its citizens to vote intelligently and to work honestly, 
and therefore the modern state or city must provide 
public schools for its children. 

Men have, indeed, a right to govern themselves, 
but without education, men have not the capacity. 
Suffrage is not a natural right, but a privilege assigned 
to those who qualif}^ themselves for its proper exercise 
in accordance with a standard fixed by the state. All 
men, except abnormals, possess the capacity for educa- 
tion and when educated have the power to govern 
themselves and the right to take part in the government 
of others. Democracy means self-government ; self- 



g-overnment necessitates universal education ; and uni- 
versal education can only be accomplished by free public 
schools under the control of all the people. 

Let us have done with these hackneyed arguments 
against the public school. Free public schools are not 
institutions of "paternalism." The city or the state 
does not establish schools as it does orphan asylums for 
children who have no parents. Who are the voters and 
tax-paj^ers but the fathers, uncles, and brothers of the 
children? The school district or the city is merely 
their organization for educating their own children. 
The state requires them to do it and provides the 
machinery, but the people direct the schools and pay 
the bills. Local self-government of schools is one of 
the most important principles of democracy. 

Let us also cast out of our minds all half-hearted 
arguments for the free education of all the people. It 
is true that it pays a community to educate all its 
youth ; but the public school is not a charity institution. 
School-houses and school-masters are cheaper than jails 
and soldiers ; but we do not build public schools for 
that reason. Such arguments for free schools are little 
less than an insult to a free people. Democracy is some- 
thing nobler than a policeman guarding and protecting 
our property and our rights. The democracy establishes 
its public schools to train new citizens and to fit them 
for self-government, and when it shall have done its full 
duty in this respect there will be little need of policemen 
and soldiers. A democracy spending hundreds of mill- 
ions for warships and forts, for armies and navies is 
enough to give devils joy. If we spent one fourth of this 
treasure in schools and missions, the whole world would 
soon be ours in bonds of love and there would be no 
need of these engines of death and destruction. 

Education conserves and education advances. Edu- 
cation conserves all the good in the past of the race. It 
gathers up the fragments, so that the new man takes 
up the burden of progress which his fathers laid down 
with their lives: "Other men labored and ye have en- 
tered into their labors." It preserves the achievements 



of man as the foundation on whicli to build the more 
stately mansions of the soul. How impossible then to 
neg-lect the school and the scholar as factors in the 
maintenance of civilization ! 

Education, is also the chief agent of human prog- 
ress. The characteristic which distinguishes man 
from the lower animals is his power to advance him- 
self independently of heredity and natural selection. 
This he does by working actively to mould his en- 
vironment so as to make it more and more favorable 
to human life. He commenced his work by mould- 
ing nature, and has continued it by moulding mind. 
Man has improved plants, developed animals, conquered 
the earth and sea, acquired resources of a thousand 
kinds, chained and used the forces of nature, invented 
tools, established transportation and communication, 
and made the whole world of matter contribute to his 
welfare and progress. He builds homes, churches, 
schools, colleges, and universities, and makes all the 
intellectual, social, and religious forces contribute to 
the development of his mind. The growing mind of 
each generation conquers more of nature, and nature in 
turn feeds the mind. So nature and mind re-act the 
one upon the other, as they both build up the man. 
Civilization has its foundation in this moulding by man 
of his environment. 

Now civilization, as the progressive realization of 
human nature, which is merely education writ large, 
employs five agencies : Science, language, art, religious 
institutions, and social and political institutions. Sci- 
ence, systematized knowledge, is the basis of all our 
thinking and doing; it is at once the fulcrum of all 
our work, and the lever of all our progress, without 
which we should have no control either of the processes 
of nature or of social life. New needs are constantly 
developing, which it is the province of science to supply. 
New materials are constantly called for, and science 
discovers them ; new forces are required to do the 
world's work, and science promptly connects them with 
the great world- machine. The modern university, 



which trains men to do these things, was the starting- 
point of the present marvelous era of wealth-production 
and of social evolution. Language has two important 
functions in human progress : it makes possible perma- 
nent records and reasoning about our experience, and it 
also provides for the communication and distribution of 
our knowledge and experience. Art, including litera- 
ture, sculpture, painting, and music, is a means of the 
expression of our ideals and feelings, and so liberates 
and elevates human experience. It is the part of our 
American education most sadly neglected. Social 
and political institutions, like the school and the state, 
preserve, transmit, and distribute all these possessions 
of society, while the church develops the spiritual 
nature of man. These great agencies — science, language, 
art, social and religious institutions — are all preserved 
and advanced through the colleges and the universities. 
Without the institutions of higher education, these 
agencies of civilization could not be maintained and 
strengthened, and the race would stand still and die. 

Society constantly needs new leaders, and the col- 
lege trains them. Progress in all departments of sci- 
ence, art, industry, and social institutions is in the 
hands of the man who knows. Ours is a day of experts. 
When we build a house, a factory, a bridge, or a rail- 
road, we call in the man who has been especially trained 
for this work. In every field of industry, in all matters 
of health and sanitation, and even in charitable and 
religious work we confide more and more in the special- 
ist. We need specialists also in municipal and state 
affairs. The modern city must provide institutions for 
the study of the sciences of human life and the arts 
of hygiene and medicine, and therefore needs sani- 
tarians and physicians; it constructs and maintains 
public works, and so needs engineers and chemists ; it 
conducts public finance and administers the business of 
the people, and so needs economists and administrators ; 
and as education is the chief business of the people, one 
of the most important needs is, educational engineers, 
trained teachers and superintendents. No better illus- 



tration of this utility of experts could possibly be pre- 
sented to you than this company of eminent scholars, 
scientists, educators, publicists, engineers, physicians, 
who have honoured us with their presence to-day, each 
of whom is a specialist in some department of knowl- 
edg-e, and is constantl3'^ using- this talent in the service 
of his country. 

Since higher education produces more eificient men, 
and thus increases the productivity, the wealth, and 
the power of the nation, it is the duty of the state 
or city to provide, not only free schools, but colleges 
and universities for the higher training of its citizens. 
The university is at once the creature and the creator 
of the democracy ; it is born of the people, and it , 
lives for the people. It is the very brain and heart 
of progress, supplying it with both direction and food. 
It is at one and the same time the school, the workshop, 
the library, and the light-house of democracy. Kvery 
democratic state or city must have its universitj^ to sup- 
pi}^ direction for its people and to train their leaders, or 
it can never realize its glorious aims. Since the educa- 
tion of all the people is the basis of democratic progress, 
the problems of public education are the problems of 
the universit}^. The first duty of the university is to 
train educational experts to develop the schools. 

Our conception of the educational rights of man has 
grown with the conception of his nature and his destiny. 
If man is a soulless being, like the stocks and stones, or 
a mere animal, like the beasts of the field, whose life is 
limited to a few years, his education is, at best, the 
expedient of a day. But if man has an immortal spirit 
capable of limitless development, then is his education of 
infinite concern. 

Our conception of education has grown both in con- 
tent and in extent. We believe first in universality in 
education. No human being is an accident, a few mole- 
cules of matter or ions of force, but every one is a child 
of God created to do a definite work in the world. We 
believe that, as every child is a plan of God, capable 
of infinite development, so every child deserves to be 

10 



rightly trained for his work. There is no class, no 
aristocracy, in education; education is for all. This 
is the fundamental argument for universal education; 
this is the ground of our faith in democracy and in 
its ultimate success — that every human being has a right 
to a chance in life, because God made him, and made 
him to do something in the world. 

Secondly, we believe in diversity in education— that 
education should include all subjects that fit men for 
better living and better serving. No department of 
knowledge belongs to any one class. The whole ma- 
terial world is for all men to study and to control; the 
whole intellectual world for all men to enter into and 
possess. As there are no classes in the democracy of 
men, so there are no classes in the republic of science. 
It is not a question of higher education for one class 
and lower education for another. There is no higher 
and lower education, as there is no primary and second- 
ary education, except in the order of time. We make 
too much of these imaginary differences. Let us take 
a broader view and realize, once for all, that education 
is the complete training of all men to do all the work 
for which God made them. 

Universality and diversity are thus the two funda- 
mental principles of our educational theory. Each man 
has a right to a complete education in any department 
of knowledge; but complete education does not mean 
that all men must be educated in the same way. Diver- 
sity of gifts, talents, office, and service is the law of 
life. Completeness consists in the harmonious develop- 
ment of the powers of the individual man. 

It is the duty of each man to develop to the fullest 
his own peculiar talents. As life and art grow more 
complex, society needs an increasingly diverse set of 
agents, and the ideal of democratic education should be 
to produce a cooperating population in which each indi- 
vidual has attained the maximum power and efficiency 
in the direction of his peculiar talents. 

A nation of men and woman with all their powers 
completely trained would be like a grand orchestra of 



11 



many instruments, each instrtiment, large or small, soft 
or loud, g-iving- its own melodious tone, and each tone 
blending- into the perfect orchestral harmony. So the 
men and women of our race, trained to their highest 
and clearest expression, may blend the music of their 
lives with the eternal harmonies of God. No individ- 
ual discord should mar the melody, no individual note 
should be lacking, for the lives and the service of all 
men are necessary to produce the grand symphony of 
the perfect democracy of the future. 

What dare we say lastly of the destiny of man in 

the democrac}^? 

What is the meaning of this education of all men 
in accordance with their God-given nature ? Education 
is a world-process for the development of human beings. 
Nature and society are at work making us into the 
image of God. As inconceivable ages of organic evolu- 
tion preceded the birth of the child, so inconceivable 
ages of educational work must succeed his birth before 
he becomes the perfect man. As it took all the creative 
energies to make this "heir of all the ages," so it will 
take all the resources of the family, school, church and 
state to fully develop this citizen of the Kingdom of 
Heaven. 

To this end the world of nature and the world of 
society are perfectly adapted. Paulsen says that it is 
impossible to conceive a world better fitted than ours to 
educate man. What better school could be contrived 
for him than this wonderful world with its myriads of 
objects of interest and beauty, all shot through with 
light and vibrating with sound. All the world's a 
school, and all the men and women merely pupils. 

What is true of the material world is also true of 
the social world. The experience of nations teaches 
that whatever morality declares to be good and just is 
found to preserve and advance individual as well as 
social life, while evil impedes and destroys it. Injustice 
and falsehood may triumph for a time but in the end 
right rules. Through suffering and death the truth 
passes to its resurrection. 

12 



Moreover, the truth does not always have to wait 
until the next world for its coronation. Right rules 
eventually in this world, as the history of nations in a 
thousand instances declares. We have a striking illus- 
tration before us to-day in the humiliation of Russia by 
Japan. The power that for ages has held its own peo- 
ple in bonds and persecuted the Jews and all other aliens, 
the dynasty that stole the Baltic provinces, murdered 
Poland, and seeks now to smother all the liberty and 
learning that lives in unhappy Finland, has found its 
judge and executioner at last in a little people whose 
virtues, exhibited in a devotion and patriotism never 
surpassed, are a splendid testimony to the power of 
righteousness to exalt a nation. Every believer in 
humankind, every lover of justice and truth, hails Japan 
to-day as a glorious example of what education can do 
for a people. 

Education in this broad sense is the process whereby 
men and nations realize their destiny and reach the 
highest goal of power and service. What is that destiny 
and what that goal ? 

Upward evolution is the one method of all the vast 
periods of the past. The time spanned by human his- 
tory, by the records of the rocks, or even by the wider 
history of the cosmos, is only a small chapter of eter- 
nity ; but that chapter is written full of the great First 
Cause. The irreversible, ascending process of organic 
evolution of which we read there, is a lesson from the 
Infinite, a parable of the Truth. Now, if matter 
teaches us by these unwearying processes of evolution, 
by ph5^sical and biological laws, to expect only progress 
in the world of nature, how much more does mind en- 
courage us by its unmeasured development through 
natural and educational agencies, to hope for perfection 
in the world of spirit. Mental, as well as physical 
evolution seeks a kingdom beyond our present horizon. 
They both declare that there must be a reality back of 
this vast creative work, a destiny ahead of this tre- 
mendous progressive force. Education is merely the 
course of evolution become conscious in man. It is a 

13 



part of the one vast process of making a Universe of 
worlds and a Heaven of spirits. The work begun in 
darkness and chaos, in world-mist and vaporous nebulae, 
in seething- suns and cooling planets ; the life born on 
land and in sea ; in grass, herb, and fruit ; in fish, fowl, 
and creeping things — all this unrolling matter and all 
this ascending life — has its culmination in man, its com- 
pletion in his education. 

Our experience of the development and education of 
man teaches us that "in this world there is nothing 
great but man ; in man there is nothing great but 
mind." How else can we explain the upward develop- 
ment of unrealized mind which education reveals except 
on the theory that behind the whole process and giving 
it power at every stage is the one Infinite Mind ? In 
the whole universe there is nothing great but mind! 
The world's a school, and the Infinite Mind imminent 
therein is the Great Teacher! 

The education of man is never complete. The 
formative physical and social influences bearing upon 
him are never ceasing — they tug at him as long as he 
lives. His environment is never exhausted, and there- 
fore he never has all the education he can take. There 
is always more to learn, to love, to do. Our ideals flee 
from us as we pursue them. Truth, beauty, and good- 
ness are infinite and eternal, and are waiting to be 
known, loved, and realized by the intellect and heart of 
man. They are the objects of his ceaseless study, the 
encouragement of his tireless strivings, and the goal of 
his endless development. Because he loves truth and 
beauty, and pursues ideals, and hopes so universally 
and unceasingly, we must believe in his continuous 
progress. The process of education proves that man is 
capable of infinite development. This is a basis of 
our hope of immortalitv. 

But why is man immortal ? To what end has he 
an undying mind, capable of infinite development ? Ser- 
vice, we found, is the ultimate end of education. As it 
has been in time, so we believe it will be in eternity. 
As we are being educated for service here, so we shall be 



14 



educated for a hig-her service in the hereafter. As ser- 
vice is the purpose of our education, so also it is the 
means of our future training- ; we are trained for service, 
and we are trained by service. We are told that a violin 
tuned by a master grows ever richer and sweeter with 
the years. A Stradivarius, three hundred years old, 
played for years by a Paganini holds his spirit, they 
tell us, as well as that of its maker in every plate and 
fibre, ready to breath it forth again in music at the 
touch of a master. So God makes us every one after his 
own fashion, and b}-^ plajnng upon us through the 5^ears, 
tunes us and fills us with His Spirit, and so prepares us 
to praise Him in an unending- life of service. Service is 
the end of all education, service is the end of immor- 
tality. Does philosoph}^ g'ive us thus a hint of our 
destiny? Behold, O ye struggling, suffering- men and 
women of this world the vision it gives us of the future! 
A vast multitude praising their Maker and Teacher, 
each upon his own instrument, in accordance with his 
own nature — a complete brotherhood of perfect spirits — 
such was the dream of King- David when he sang- of a 
people praising their God " with the sound of the trum- 
pet," "with the psaltery and harp," "with stringed 
instruments and organs," and "upon the high sounding- 
cymbals," And such ag-ain was the vision of Saint 
John, when he saw the New Jerusalem and "heard a 
voice from heaven as the voice of many waters and as 
the voice of a g-reat thunder," and "as the voice of 
harpers harping with their harps," and "they sang as it 
were a new song before the throne" .... "and no man 
could learn the song- save they that had been redeemed 
out of the earth." Only those taug-ht of God in this 
world will sing- the new song- before the throne ! 



15 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



029 912 939 1 




